Comparative phylogeography of salmonid fishes (Salmonidae) reveals late to post-Pleistocene exchange between three now-disjunct river basins in Siberia |
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Authors: | E Froufe S Alekseyev I Knizhin P Alexandrino S Weiss |
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Institution: | Centro De Investigação Em Biodiversidade E Recursos Genéticos (Cibio/up), Campus Agrário De Vairão, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal;;Faculdade De Ciências, Universidade Do Porto, Praça Gomes Teixeira, 4009-002 Porto, Portugal;;N. K. Koltsov's Institute of Developmental Biology (IDB), Russian Academy of Sciences, 117334, Moscow, Vavilova 26, Russia;;Irkutsk State University, Department of Vertebrate Zoology, 664011, Irkutsk, Sukhe-Batora 5, Russia;;Karl-Franzens Universität Graz, Institut Für Zoologie, Universitätsplatz 2, A-8010 Graz |
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Abstract: | Abstract. We use a comparative phylogeographical framework to evaluate the hypothesis of hydrological exchange during the Pleistocene among the now disjunct Lena, Amur, and Enisei basins in Siberia, and to provide evidence on the causal mechanism of their present day faunal dissimilarities. Approximately 600 bases of the mitochondrial control region were sequenced in five distinct lineages among three genera of salmonid fishes, Hucho, Brachymystax and Thymallus. All three basins were fixed for divergent (2–5.4%) lineages of Thymallus whereas a single shared haplotype was present in all three basins for Hucho taimen ( Pallas, 1773 ) and one shared haplotype between the Lena and Amur basins out of a total of five for blunt‐snouted and one out of five for sharp‐snouted Brachymystax lenok ( Pallas, 1773 ). For both blunt‐ and sharp‐snouted lenok the haplotypes found within each basin did not form clades, so no relationship between genotypes and geographical occurrence was found. Our data support relatively recent hydrological mixing of the major river drainage systems in eastern and far‐eastern Siberia, congruent with the hypothesis of large‐scale palaeo‐hydrological exchange stemming from glacial advance, retreat and melting during Pleistocene climate fluctuations. Furthermore, these results in conjunction with a comparison of overall faunal composition suggest that environmental differences rather than historical contingency may be responsible for the faunal dissimilarities of the Amur, Lena, and Enisei river basins. |
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Keywords: | Amur Baikal Brachymystax Enisei Hucho Lena mtDNA phylogeography Thymallus |
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